Archive for the ‘Voluntaryism’ Category

To the average citizen, the suggestion that society could function without a government is unfathomable. We have all been programmed with the notion that statelessness equals chaos and violence. This myth protects the state by making them appear valuable and necessary. For those who have the audacity to contemplate statelessness, one of the first questions to arise is: “How could the roads operate without a state?”

In, “What is to be Done?” Rothbard argues that our objective is to “advance our principals—to spread libertarian-individualist thought… among the people and to spread its policies in the political arena.” The liberty movement has two main objectives: “boots on the ground” action and creating and disseminating propaganda. The propagandist wing of the liberty movement currently resembles a book club, albeit a large and decentralized book club. Currently the movement pushes forward with enough energy that even the layman not usually inclined to read is motivated enough to do so, however, we should not bet on this continuing. The book club model works fine for now, but it is essential that the propagandist wing further develops blogs and forums focused on different aspects of the liberal project, and particularly develops a means by which a layman may be exposed to increasingly radical ideas.

Who is to blame for societal ills? It’s always tempting to look for someone to blame. After all, as Rush sings in their song, Free Will, “Blame is better to give than to receive.” When it comes to the ills of society, “progressives” are very fond of blaming “greedy capitalists,” businessmen, and free markets. On the other hand, libertarians like myself are quite fond of placing all of the blame in the lap of the State. As much as I despise the State and all it’s works, I am convinced that the truth lies between these two extremes, or rather, within them both.

Imagine there is a city in the middle of a large mostly uninhabited continent. This city came into existence through homesteading: sovereign individuals peacefully mixed their labor with finite pieces of unused land and made them productive in order to sustain and improve their lives.

Realizing that they would all individually benefit from trusting each other, trading with each other, and not killing each other, the city dwellers committed to a formal, voluntary, and explicit social contract with one another. This contract spelled out the rules which would govern their interactions and the methods of arbitration they would use to solve disputes as they arose.

The axiom of self-ownership is fundamental to anarcho-capitalistic and voluntaryist philosophies. Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that the act of arguing itself requires the arguer to have accepted the axiom of self-ownership. I suggest that if someone has reasons for arguing, their reasons will be reflected in the assumptions they make about “reality.” These reasons compel them to argue, the very act of which Hoppe has shown to contain an assumption of self-ownership. We would therefore expect the assumptions arguers make about reality to contain at least one concerning self-ownership. In this essay I debunk the Marxist notion of the exploitation of the laborer even if we, for the sake of argument, concede the labor theory of value, and then I show how this relates back to an assumption about the right to self-ownership.

Seeing the LRC post on how the conversion time from being a libertarian to being an anarchist is about two years again made me think about whether it’s better to help libertarians on the way to anarchism or voluntaryism or to try to convert overt statists to libertarianism. After considering the question for a bit I realized the answer was neither, or rather, both. When talking with either one, however, it is important to remember the goal is not their immediate conversion to antistatism, but rather, to try to help nudge them along the way

To vote or not to vote? This is the question: Whether it is nobler to take part in the political system in hopes of dismantling it, or to withdraw from the system, and so withdraw my consent. Ay, there’s the rub; for in voting to overthrow the power that oppresses me, I am giving my consent to the system that empowers it–majority rule. And I cannot consent to that.